Chance
by Pumpkin Zucchini
Summary: Odd encounters can have great consequences.


Robin's been all over the place. Who's to say she hasn't encountered some present-timeline characters during her travels?

* * *

Robin ducked into an alley as heavy footsteps thundered by. She took deep breaths, trying to calm down her pounding heart. Once the coast was clear, Robin cautiously snuck out and sprinted down the opposite way. Immediately, she ran into a Marine.

"Whoa!" the Marine laughed, holding her steady. Robin flinched and prepared to fight her way through but the hands on her shoulder didn't move to her neck. She slowly opened one eye and looked up at the Marine.

"There's blood all over your face. What've you been doing, kid?" the woman asked, a cigarette precariously balanced between her lips.

"I..." Robin whispered, not daring to believe it. Was it possible the Marine had no idea who she was? No, it couldn't be. Everyone knew about the Demon of Ohara. But it had been four years since her wanted posters were issued.

"Hey, did you see some pirates pass by?" the woman knelt down to face Robin. Her eyes searched the girl's face, but they showed no hints of recognition or deception.

"That way..." Robin pointed down the street. Once the crew had docked at the town and noticed the Marines patrolling, they had immediately blamed Robin for attracting the Marines' attention to them and gave chase, determined to spill blood.

"Thanks." the Marine smiled brightly. She paused and produced a bread roll from her pocket. "Here, you look starving."

And with that, she ran down the street, rifle on her back. Robin watched her, bewildered, and looked down at the roll in her hands.

--X--

The gunfire had begun mere seconds after Robin found shelter in an abandoned shack at the edge of the forest a distance away from the town. She recognized the faint shouts of Marines and the raucous laughing of pirates. Screams. There were screams.

She curled up into a fetal position against a cold slab of concrete, squeezing her eyes shut as the screaming and gunfire intensified. The Marines must have found the pirates.

"Get everyone to safety! Evacuate the citizens!" a Marine bellowed not far from Robin's hiding spot. Robin sprouted an eye from a tree and saw, to her horror, rooftops ablaze and fire consuming the village.

Ohara...

The eye vanished and Robin curled up even tighter, trying to ignore the screams of people being burned and killed.

--X--

Robin carefully picked her way over bodies and debris, the aftermath of the battle still burning. The pirates had long gone, no doubt victorious over the Marines, many of whom lay in bloody pieces strewn along the ground.

Robin stopped. There was some movement a way off. A survivor.

No, a child.

She seemed hopelessly lost, grime and ash smeared on pale skin. In her arms there was a bundle, a tiny little bundle that didn't make a sound despite the spoils of battle strewn around in a mix of blood and flames. It was an odd sight to see such a young child walking so calmly through the ruins and ravages.

Robin blinked.

The little girl sat down heavily on a door that had been chopped in half. She cradled the bundle, looking all around with wide eyes. Robin ducked behind a crumbling wall and squeezed her eyes shut. This wasn't her business. People died all the time, didn't they? Robin had no right to interfere.

If people were to die, there was nothing she could do about it.

Robin inhaled sharply as a roof collapsed just a little way down the street. She looked at the destroyed cottage and noticed a brief flash of pink in the gray ash. The pink stirred.

"No way..." Robin muttered. As implausible as it had seemed for a child, yet alone a baby, to survive the pirate raid, Robin found it simply miraculous that there there was a living Marine left amongst the corpses. The pirates must have missed that one. Upon further inspection, Robin realized it was the woman who had given her the bread roll earlier that day when the sky was still visible.

"Shh." a voice whispered above the crackling flames. Robin turned around to watch the little girl. She was still cradling the swath of dusty blankets, her eyes wide and sad.

People died all the time...

A tiny hand reached up from the bundle and groped at the air. The girl smiled a little and let the baby play with a lock of periwinkle hair.

The twelve-year old stood up, brushing rubble off her scraped knees. She clenched a fist and concentrated, feeling the strange sensation of a cold sleeve running up her arm as a duplicate sprouted from the ground near the girl.

The girl didn't scream when she noticed the disembodied arm. Her arms adjusted around the bundle as she stood up, observing the limb with curiosity. She blinked when the hand waved down the road, pointing at the collapsed cottage where the little sliver of pink still twitched vaguely.

Maybe they would die, maybe they would survive.

Robin would never find out. As the girl with the baby set off towards where the arm directed her, the Oharan child stealthily ran off the opposite way, towards the harbor. There were less bodies there, although many of the ships floating in the harbor had obviously been looted and trashed. Robin stepped over a mangled corpse and found a tiny little sailboat that had somehow remained untouched during the attack on the village.

Robin hopped into the boat and looked one last time back at the burning rooftops. She untied the rope anchoring it to the pier and the boat drifted away from the razed island, set off towards unknown destinations.


End file.
